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Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), an industry leader in storage technologies, today introduced the company’s most advanced automotive grade solution to date, the iNAND® 7250A embedded flash drive (EFD). Leveraging enhanced flash storage technology for superior reliability, the new SanDisk®-branded storage device is designed to support data demands of the latest “advanced driver-assistance systems” (ADAS), cutting-edge infotainment and safety systems, and other connected technologies in vehicles. It delivers dependable performance even in extreme conditions in and around the vehicle, including ambient temperatures down to -40oC and up to 105oC. This makes the robust, new EFD ideal for a wide range of connected automotive systems and environments.

“The shift beyond simple connected automotive applications, such as infotainment, to ADAS and autonomous systems, is spurring rapid growth in the volume and velocity of data on our roadways, as well as the need for more resilient and intelligent storage solutions to manage it,” said Christopher Bergey, vice president of Embedded and Integrated Solutions for Western Digital. “By utilizing enhanced, enterprise-class storage and controller technology, our new iNAND 7250A embedded storage device offers the outstanding reliability and quality that is essential for the automotive industry, smart features that our customers want most and exceptional performance over a wide range of temperatures. It’s well-suited for everything from 3D mapping and vehicle-to-vehicle communications to the high thermal temperatures that can be generated by autonomous driving computing devices and systems in the car.”

The number of vehicles with “connected” systems continues to rise, as does the volume of data generated that must be managed. According to Gartner:

The total cumulative shipments of automobiles equipped with data connectivity, including those with aftermarket devices attached to the onboard diagnostics (OBD) port, will reach 220 million in 2020;1

Embedded communications modules will overtake mobile device tethering as the dominant mode of connectivity for connected cars in 2018;1

By 2020 connected and autonomous car data traffic per vehicle may reach over 280 petabytes, or 280 million gigabytes annually. 2

The iNAND 7250A is designed to work with a variety of automotive systems in the vehicle that generate, receive and process data, from increasingly complex infotainment and navigation systems, to diagnostic systems continuously processing analytics, to constantly streaming vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure systems. The new iNAND 7250A also comes with the company’s suite of automotive “smart” features, which include enhanced power failure protection, a comprehensive memory health status monitor, advanced diagnostic tools and more.

Samples of the iNAND 7250A EFD are currently available. The new device joins the company’s family of solutions for the automotive industry, including SanDisk brand automotive grade SD and EFD solutions.